


We've known the leaden no-light

by ncfan



Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Cuddling & Snuggling, Death, Dubious Consent, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Smut, Unhealthy Relationships, What the hell am I doing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 12:18:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17446841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Reconciliation, of a sort. (Fall apart over a death; come back together over a death. For them, it's the only appropriate thing.)





	1. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is taken from Denise Levertov’s ‘Wanderer’s Daysong,’ one of her poems collected in _Candles in Babylon._

The telephone had been, two and a half years ago, an expensive investment. Herbert would admit, if only to himself, that obtaining and installing the telephone had been enough of a strain on their finances that if he had not genuinely seen a need for it, he wouldn’t have suggested getting one, let alone insisted on it. But they were experiencing something of a shift in their clientele. There were still plenty of people—still were to this day—who tended to just barge in through the front door (or the back, depending on the time of day), and there were always going to be emergencies at the mill, but they were starting to acquire more in the way of patients who actually scheduled appointments before showing up at their house. Hence a need to facilitate the process of scheduling appointments; hence, the telephone.

(There were other things a telephone was good for, too, besides scheduling appointments. Granted, actually _making_ telephone calls was expensive enough that Herbert still availed himself primarily of mail-order, but it had occasionally been good for procuring materials when they needed them quickly.)

Stephen hardly ever used the telephone; he was, by his own admission, _deeply_ un-fond of it. The only thing he ever really used it for was calling patients when he had a question about appointment times, or if someone missed an appointment.

It got Herbert’s attention when, one night, much later than they ever received the few calls they got, Stephen went racing for the phone.

They weren’t… (It was his own fault.) They weren’t on especially good terms, at present. It was possible that Stephen had gotten a call earlier, while Herbert was out of the house. That was entirely possible. Or maybe, Herbert thought, as he started down the stairs, it was something else. They hadn’t spoken to each other overmuch, these past four months. (It was his own fault.) It could easily be something else entirely.

Herbert tensed automatically when he drank in the sight he found in the kitchen: Stephen with his ear pressed to the receiver of the telephone, scribbling frantically on a scrap of paper, face pallid and strained. He nodded a few times, for all that his correspondent surely had no inkling of what he was doing, scratched out more writing on the paper, nodded again. His shoulders were beginning to shudder a little, a faint tremor that would only have been visible to one who knew his body well enough to distinguish the normal rise and fall of unlabored breath from agitated shaking.

However little it was welcome, there was still the impulse to step out of the shadowy doorway and smooth the stress out of his arms, soothe taut muscles. But it wasn’t welcome, and Herbert kept his silence, watching unnoticed.

After a full minute’s silence, Stephen gave a final, choppy nod. “Alright. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just—“ He licked his lips. “I’ll be there soon.”

The receiver was slammed back down into the fork of the switch hook with a metallic clang that rang out in the air like a shot. Stephen gripped the edges of the kitchen counter, head bowed and shoulders shuddering more than ever. He sucked in a deep, gasping breath, as if trying to beat back nausea.

Herbert hovered in the doorway, unease uncoiling in his stomach—two sources for it, one relatively altruistic, one… rather less so.

When Stephen looked up from the counter and started to cast about, Herbert got one good look at his face—ghastly pale, jaw taut and eyes darting about like a spooked horse—before Stephen startled at realizing he wasn’t alone in the kitchen, and the guarded, opaque mask he’d been perfecting over the past four months was pulled abruptly down over it.

Time and experience had not inured Herbert to its effects. The sight of it stung more deeply every time. He said nothing as Stephen pushed past him out into the hall, but followed at a distance, too far to be a shadow and too close to pretend that he _was_ doing anything but following. An answer would come eventually, even if it could be discerned only through extrapolation.

The suitcase came out; _that_ sent a nasty jolt through Herbert, and he found himself itching to step forward, itching to say… That did not bear close examination, and the next impulse was one of commingled shame and derision, knowing he should be stronger than this, and that he did not even know what was going on, whether it was anything that concerned him or not. The suitcase came out, and Stephen was stuffing changes of clothing into it haphazardly, distraction becoming increasingly evident with each passing moment. Other necessities got tossed into the suitcase until Stephen was latching it shut, fingers scrabbling over the latches like they were slick with grease.

He looked up, and this time he didn’t startle. “My father’s ill,” and he was pushing past Herbert again, heading for the stairs at a pace that belied the heavy suitcase hefted in his arms.

“Serious?” The question was foolish, of course. Anything short of ‘serious’ wouldn’t have seen him hurrying for the door at an hour when it would have been difficult at best to get transportation to the nearest town with a train station that was still running so late in the evening.

Stephen likely thought it foolish, too, for he didn’t address the question as he reached for coat and hat, wrapped a scarf around his neck and forced gloves across his by-now shaking hands to ward off against the bitter cold. A part of Herbert wanted to reach for his own coat. He had grown to dislike leaving the house at night—he was certain there was something out in the woods that only came out at night, could not shake the reality of its presence from his mind for all that he had never seen it—and disliked just as much the idea of Stephen heading out alone. Stephen caught his eye and he stilled, waiting.

And waited. Stephen’s dark eyes raked over his face, lines forming in his brow and jaw working as it did when he was agitated. Finally, he said, simply, “I’ll be back,” and strode out into the cold of late November, leaving it to Herbert to lock the door behind him.

It was at best unclear as to whether he’d meant that as a promise or a warning. Perhaps, and the idea didn’t sting so much as it seared, Stephen suspected he’d come back to find another living body in the basement if he didn’t remind him, like dealing with a cat who couldn’t be trusted not to bring into the house a bird that could still fly or a rabbit that could still scream. Still, he’d be back. He’d said so himself. After four months, after July, the reassurance was welcome, however it might have been meant.

-0-0-0-

There was, in Herbert’s opinion, no use waiting for a telephone call over the next few days. He had his hands full moving Stephen’s schedule around, accommodating as many of the patients scheduled to come around in the next few days as possible. There weren’t as many questions about that as he’d expected; most of the people he contacted didn’t even ask any questions about _why_ they were being rescheduled or being seen by Doctor West instead of Doctor Harper. The longer _that_ went on, the more it sent sparks of irritation shooting through him, though no one seemed to notice it in Herbert when he spoke to them. It wasn’t right that Stephen’s absence should draw such little notice.

He had his hands full here. There was no reason to wait for a telephone call, not when there could be little doubt that Stephen was just as busy as he was. In a way, the silence was giving Herbert more information than a telephone call of any length would have been able to ( _—surely have a family doctor; if he hasn’t found time to call, things must be very dire_ —before reminding himself that there were reasons enough that Stephen might not make contact even if his father was on the mend).

No telephone call, and a letter would have been a waste of time for what was probably—hopefully—not meant to be a long-term trip. The last time Herbert had had to deal with a family emergency—one of a similar stripe to this, for all that silence carried with it inherent ambiguity—he hadn’t bothered writing, either. It was no use waiting for some kind of contact. He had work to do.

The house felt entirely too big when he was there alone. Herbert had discovered that early on, the last time Stephen had gone away. Walls soared away from each other and floorboards stretched and strained until all that was familiar was strange, until any point of reference Herbert might have clung to was gone and he was floundering. The fraught, recriminating silence of the past four months, all affection and companionship withdrawn, had been a special kind of hell, but still preferable to an empty house where nothing was as it should be, when every creak of an old house settling became someone trying the lock on a door or the latch of a window. Herbert would sooner go back to that fraught silence than endure for much longer how the house transformed when he lived in it by himself.

(Herbert didn’t really venture out. Beyond what was absolutely necessary, he didn’t… He liked to think he was in control of himself, but he had been wrong before—and when he was wrong, the consequences skewed towards the dire. Just how difficult would it be for anyone he spoke to in town to guess at what was unravelling in his mind and in his heart? He already felt as if he’d been cut open—though the wound, at certain times, felt far older than it did at others. Exposed as such to the millworkers and gossipy housewives of Bolton would only serve to flay the incision open wider.)

He saw to patients, flipped through old notes written with aging ink, couldn’t concentrate over them well enough to make corrections or addendums, couldn’t bring himself to start on anything new. Every time he got out a new sheet of paper, his mind would just… It was completely hopeless. Trying to read fiction carried with it the same problem. Herbert read over medical journals and textbooks, instead. In the evenings, when dusk crept over the house with gloom and hazy indigo and the fresh snowfall lost its shine, Herbert caught himself straining his ears for sound. Whether for the ring of a telephone or the jiggle of a lock being tried, he couldn’t say.

Finally, around five nights (for all that it had felt longer) after Stephen had left the house in such a hurry, there came out of the dark the shrill, jarring ring of a telephone. Not that Herbert thought he had caught the first ring. He had fallen into a shallow, uneasy sleep nearly an hour before he woke groggily to that piercing ring. He hadn’t actually recognized the ringing for what it was at first, when he was still trying to blink sleep out of his eyes. Herbert jerked awake, and his stupid, sleep-fogged mind thought it was hearing a scream.

It only took a few moments for him to realize the truth, and, shrugging off the bedcovers to face the cold with only extreme reluctance, Herbert reached for his dressing gown and his spectacles, and started for the stairs. Sleep still had too much of a hold over him to allow for speculation as to the caller’s identity; there was just the pressing need to make that shrill ringing _stop_.

“Hello?” Herbert fumbled at the front of his dressing gown, trying to hold it shut—it got so much colder in this house than it ever had in the Caldwell’s home back in Arkham—as he waited for a reply. It occurred to him to feel a prick of embarrassment at how bleary he sounded; unless the caller realized the time, whoever was on the other end of the telephone was likely going to think him drunk.

“…Herbert.” A familiar voice sounded in the receiver, and every last bit of sleep fled Herbert all at once. “I…” Stephen paused; the silence shifted uneasily. “…I forgot the time. I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t as though a telephone really captured tone and timbre, and of course it did nothing to give an idea of expression or posture. So Herbert was left to wonder if he had imagined the hitch in Stephen’s voice as he shook his head—oh, look, now he was doing it, too. “It doesn’t matter to me. How is your father?”

Another pause, a long one. As the silence stretched out to thirty seconds, then forty, fifty, a minute, Herbert thought he could hear something on the other end of the call, something rough and jolting. Finally, as brittle as glass, “We had the funeral today.”

And that told Herbert everything he needed to know (Well, maybe not everything). Another senseless death. “I’m so—“

He was speaking softly. Perhaps Stephen just hadn’t heard him when he cut him off to say “I’m catching a train tomorrow morning,” but even if he hadn’t, Herbert thought he could excuse it. These were not normal circumstances, and it wasn’t as if you could see someone’s face over the telephone, anyways.

“Alright. When should I expect you back?”

“I…” His voice was high; it wobbled so noticeably that the poor conveyance of the telephone receiver wasn’t enough to hide it. “…I’m not sure. The day after tomorrow, maybe?”

Guidance was needed. The mind often went into a fog after the terrible shock of loss, made it difficult to think straight; that had been Herbert’s experience, at least. There was simply a need, he thought, to keep his own voice even. “Is that when you expect to be back in Bolton, or when you expect the train to get to Boston?”

Another falter, not as long as the last one but still long enough that Stephen was clearly groping for an answer. “…To get to Boston? I think?”

Be calm. Don’t register excessive concern, or anything else that could destabilize the conversation. (Herbert hated that this was the longest conversation they’d had in months that hadn’t been strictly related to household affairs, and hated himself for noticing.) “I’ll be waiting for you.” Herbert didn’t know if there was a tone of voice in the world vehement enough to convey just how he would be waiting. He didn’t think it would have carried over the telephone anyhow.

The “Okay,” that crackled over the receiver before Stephen hung up was unmistakably choked.

Herbert didn’t get any more sleep that night. For that matter, he didn’t get much the night following, either.

-0-0-0-

Thanksgiving had been… Thanksgiving had always been a bit of a mixed bag. Depending on what had been going on that year, the atmosphere in the dining room when the extended family sat down might be warm, or cold, or uncomfortably hot. Once alcohol was introduced into the environment, whatever was felt to start with was just intensified. Stephen could remember more than one year when things had come to blows; hell, he’d actually been involved in a couple of those fights. Missing Thanksgiving the last several years to stay in Arkham, then Bolton, had been greeted with a mixture of disappointment and relief.

Thanksgiving had been quiet this year, and Stephen thought that he would have preferred the noise. He would have gladly spent the holiday pulling apart brawling kin or nursing bruises of his own, as opposed to the stale silence of the deathbed.

Time wasn’t working as it ought. The train ride from Chicago to Boston was not a short one (especially when you weren’t on the fastest train available), with many stops on the way to pick up or let off passengers. Yet stretches between stops that should have taken hours seemed to fly by in minutes, while stretches that had only a scant few minutes between them dragged on interminably. The sun wheeled overhead at an erratic pace, stopping and crawling and flying towards the horizon as suited its whims. The night always lasted too long.

Sound wasn’t working as it ought. Stephen felt like he had his head underwater, struggling to distinguish sounds unequal to the task of making themselves heard over the roar.

And maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t working as he ought. Everything seemed far away. He and his brother had taken it in turn to hold their mother whenever she started to cry again, great, heaving sobs that made whoever was in contact with her shake from their force. Stephen hadn’t cried, himself. A few sniffling tears in a dark hallway just after— _he had barely looked any different_ —but he didn’t think that really counted.

When the gravediggers had cleared enough snow to start striking at the earth like they were holding pickaxes instead of shovels, his mother had let out a short, hiccupy sob with each grating strike. His brother’s children all flinched, though Stephen couldn’t be certain whether it was their grandmother’s crying that upset them, or if it was the viciousness with which the gravediggers attacked the frozen earth. He watched out of the corner of his eye as his sister-in-law reached for his brother’s hand, and felt a spike of longing for something he had no idea what to name.

Stephen hadn’t cried or flinched as the gravediggers went about their work. His mind darted back and forth between different points, all of them grossly inappropriate in some way. He couldn’t remember if it was normal or not for the gravediggers to still be digging a grave when a family was out in the cemetery with the casket on a makeshift bier. He couldn’t remember the meanings of nearly half the Latin words in the requiem mass, and the church had been musty and claustrophobic. He _could_ remember, all too clearly, other occasions that had found him in graveyards, staring down fresh graves. The communion wine had been sour, and its nearly rancid taste lingered on the roof of his mouth like bile. Snow sprinkled down like powder from a shaker, dusting hair and coats and making the gravediggers curse under their breath.

Stephen’s eyes would stray to the casket, and then, there was only one thing he could think about.

He was sharing his compartment with a young family, parents with two small, loud children who did not seem at all happy about being cooped up on a train. Normally, Stephen liked to think he would tolerated their behavior with good grace—it was Herbert who got irritated by cacophonous noise, not him—but now, their constant chatter, complaints, and occasional shrieks were scarcely bearable. He alternated between numb obliviousness to the noise and struggling not to respond to it, turning his face away to the window and praying their parents wouldn’t spot the look on his face.

He wanted to go home. He couldn’t decide where home was.

Finding transportation from Boston to Bolton and the trip back to Bolton passed in a blur; later, Stephen would never be able to say how he had gotten back. The world next came back into sharp focus when Stephen was stepping out of a car on the outskirts of Bolton, what felt like entirely too far from the house where he lived and practiced in the cold (Though by another measure, it felt entirely too close). He dragged his suitcase behind him as he trudged through the cold and the snow, a dull, rusty sunset dogging his steps.

This house was so empty. The thought crashed through his mind as he finally made it through the door, barely thinking to hang up his coat and his hat before starting for the stairs. Stephen had never noticed it before. The house hadn’t _felt_ empty to him before, even when they were still moving their things in and it was a barely-furnished house with warped doors and warped windows and peeling wallpaper. But it did now. It was lacking any kind of center or grounding, like a plant without roots, set to fly away in the air, or a ship without an anchor that could just float away onto the ocean, never to be seen again. It was without center or grounding, but it was shelter from the wind and a shelter, however slight, from the cold, so he wouldn’t leave it for now.

He wanted his childhood bed. It was all Stephen could think of as he lied down on the bed he called his own now, pushing the quilt to the foot of the bed so he could stretch out without anything tangling in his legs. He wanted his old bed with his old mattress and his old pillows and his old, red-and-white checkered quilt. Whenever he’d drawn that quilt over his head as a child, the cares of the world and everything in it had seemed less important, somehow, and all of his own cares less stinging.

Stephen couldn’t have that bed. Not here, certainly, but even back in his childhood home, Stephen couldn’t have that bed, or that mattress, or those pillows, or that quilt. The mattress and the pillows were long gone, either sold or thrown away; he wasn’t certain which. The bedframe and the quilt belonged to his oldest niece, now. He had this bed, and he felt exposed upon it, bloodless and cold. This house might have provided some slight shelter from the cold, but it was no shelter against his own thoughts.

_he just—_

Those thoughts had rendered him deaf to the sound of footfalls on the narrow, creaking staircase. The first thing he registered was the squeak of the floorboard just outside his open door, and the sound of soft, light footfalls just inside the doorway.

Stephen couldn’t find it in him to acknowledge Herbert’s presence, as he listened to the man draw slowly closer to the bed; he was grateful, suddenly, that he’d chosen to lie on his back facing away from the door, staring out the window at the darkening red sky. His jaw clenched, nostrils flaring as he drew a deep breath, trying and failing to steady himself. Suddenly, he didn’t feel cold, as a hard, hot knot formed in his stomach, resolving itself into something sharp enough to cut.

 _If he says one word about the reagent, I will_ strangle _him_.

Never mind that the reagent was all Stephen could think about every time he looked at his father’s lifeless body, every time he looked at the casket in which it laid. Not a full waking hour had he spent after his father’s death not thinking at least once about the reagent, thinking of dead hearts that had begun to beat again, thinking of all the ways the reagent could have been refined and perhaps even perfected by now if not for the constant obstacles he and Herbert had had to contend with. He had wished, stupidly, even knowing that they had never been able to restore the mind of a reanimated corpse, that the only circumstances under which Herbert had ever managed that were nothing Stephen _ever_ wished to replicate, that he had a dose of the serum with him. His father’s dead eyes stared up at him, and he had never needed anything so badly as he had needed to see the light come back into them.

Where the thoughts that had originated in his own mind were at least somewhat bearable, in that the agony was somewhat blunted, Herbert… Breathing evenly was an impossibility; not breathing at all was a possibility edging closer and closer to reality. Or perhaps his heart would explode first; it was certainly pounding hard enough for that to become a threat. He’d been thinking about the reagent off and on for nearly a week now; he didn’t want to hear Herbert go on about it, that was the _last_ thing he wanted to hear…

The mattress sank slightly as Herbert sat down on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t a lecture, but somehow it saw Stephen’s shoulders stiffening even further. The closeness made his skin pebble with goosebumps, the closest they’d been to each other since that… He could scarcely even call it an argument, when only one person would speak at all. He wanted to push Herbert away. He wanted to roll over and pull him closer. He wanted to want nothing at all.

Herbert’s hand, small, murderous, and the gentlest touch Stephen had had from anyone in a while, lit on his shoulder. Just sat there; no motion, no pressure. Stephen hated the catch in his breath as what little warmth there was in Herbert’s near-perpetually clammy hand sank through his clothing to reach his skin. He didn’t turn to face him. He didn’t say a word.

And Stephen watched as, out of the corner of his eye, that white hand lifted from his shoulder and passed out of sight, only to settle a moment later in his hair. A solid, choking lump settled in Stephen’s throat as Herbert began to gently stroke his hair, an achingly slow rhythm that was— His eyes prickled.

His eyes prickled, then filled, and then the lump in his throat found its voice, and Stephen was rolling over on his bed so fast that the mattress let out a screech of protest. Herbert couldn’t back away fast enough; what he did was wobble precariously as Stephen grabbed him, buried his head in his chest, and started to sob. They didn’t fall.

For now, Stephen had forgotten about the blood on Herbert’s hands, forgotten the blood that had gotten smeared on his own. The buttons digging into his face didn’t matter; how shockingly cold they were didn’t matter. That Herbert’s chest shook with the force of Stephen’s sobs and they were constantly wobbling as if balanced on a wheel didn’t matter. All that mattered was the presence of someone living, someone who was _there._

Still no sound from Herbert; the only sound in the house that came from the thick, keening sobs that tore from Stephen’s mouth. Stephen offered no resistance when Herbert began to shift their weight to lie on their sides on the bed, though his refusal to unwrap his arms from Herbert’s back perhaps made positioning a little awkward.

Soon, they were lying down, and Stephen pulled closer, gasping for breath as his chest constricted with such agony that he thought his ribs must snap. There was a hand rubbing circles between his shoulder blades; there was a hand cradling the back of his head, fingers wound in his hair. Stephen could feel Herbert’s heartbeat against his forehead, fast and shallow.

To each other, they said not one word.

-0-0-0-

Stephen didn’t know when he had fallen asleep. Until he found himself waking, stiff and cold, throat raw and mouth thick and stale, it took a moment for him to realize he’d been asleep at all.

His window and the open door into the hallway were both painted jet black, the lamp Stephen had had on providing the only light, a shallow pool of yellow light that illuminated the bed and left all else in the room lapping gray waves of shadow. Stephen had been sleeping with the side of his face pressed into the coverlet, and his grimaced as he lifted his head and the indentation marks impressed into his skin were exposed to the chill air.

 _How long was I asleep_? The clock was bathed in shadow, and thus unreadable. Per the darkness, it could have been two hours or six, a day or a year. He had half a mind to do as Rip van Winkle—sleep for twenty years, and let the world change beyond recognition while he dreamt. Everything would be so strange when he awoke that his cares would mean nothing to him at all.

It was when Stephen was rolling his stiff shoulders that he first woke up enough to feel the arm slung loosely across his back, and he realized he wasn’t alone.

Waking up next to Herbert for the first time in—his still sleep-fogged brain was having a hard time remembering, maybe a little over five months, it gave Stephen an odd, taut feeling. Herbert’s face was mashed into the pillow, his spectacles driving angry red marks into his skin. Stephen looked at him, looked at his pale face with those angry red marks, and the slight dark marks of sleep deprivation starting to form around his eyes.

He’d stayed. Maybe Herbert had just fallen asleep before Stephen had, but somehow, Stephen didn’t think so. He’d exhausted himself quickly, and even now, he could feel exhaustion tugging at his bones, trying to drag him back down to sleep.

Stephen still didn’t know what he wanted, whether it was to push Herbert away again or pull him closer. He wanted both. He wanted neither. He wasn’t actually certain what he wanted. But it was cold, and he could delay the decision for one night, at least.

Gingerly, Stephen slipped his hand under Herbert’s head, just enough to slide his spectacles down his nose. Herbert, not typically the deepest sleeper in the world, didn’t stir as Stephen set his spectacles down on the bedside table. Slipping back into old patterns of familiarity was entirely too easy; Stephen could almost smile as he reflected on the fact that Herbert had managed to fall asleep fully-clothed _again_. The shoes might present some problem, but Herbert was so particular about keeping his shoes clean that Stephen doubted they’d dirty the coverlet; at worst, Herbert would wake up grumbling about having fallen asleep with his shoes on.

But as Stephen was reaching towards the foot of the bed for the quilt, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he looked back to see Herbert lying awake on the pillow, looking up at him. “Where are my…”

It was with something close to regret that Stephen handed him his spectacles back. Herbert slid them back up the bridge of his nose and blinked owlishly up at Stephen. There was a flash of something in Herbert’s face, something Stephen didn’t have time to identify, as Herbert rearranged his face into the calm, almost expressionless mask that had become what Herbert nearly always put forth to the world—but not to Stephen, it never used to be something he used when they were alone, and the sight of it sparked a bitter pang of loss somehow strong enough to make itself felt along with everything else.

Herbert’s eyes flitted over the bed, over Stephen and over his own, sleep-crumpled clothes. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, before springing out of bed, too quickly for Stephen to grab at his arm or his shoulder, too quickly for Stephen to try to keep him there. “I must have fallen asleep.” He spoke more quickly than he did to the world, though, his voice pitching so high it was almost a squeak. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not—“

But Herbert was already heading for the door. He paused at the threshold, resting his hand on the doorframe. “There is food in the icebox, if you’re interested.”

To be perfectly honest, he wasn’t. Now that he was awake, Stephen’s stomach was churning again as it had constantly for days after his father had died. There was the original reason for that, and a new one as well. What he wanted, he couldn’t find a voice for, so he just shook his head.

Those pale, piercing eyes flitted between his face and the doorframe. “And…” Herbert ran his fingers lightly over the oaken doorframe. “…I am sorry about your father.”

Still unable to find his tongue, Stephen nodded.

Part of him wanted to call Herbert back after he had gone, but he had no idea what he would have said to him.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CN/TW** : Dubious consent, blood, mentions of murder, mention of non-explicit gore, brief non-explicit mention of disordered eating]

With each passing day, the frigid silence of early December grew increasingly charged, coiling like a spring wound fit to snap. The fresh, violent grief of consigning his father to the earth had begun to fade, and Stephen felt… He could scarcely describe it. He felt hollow, as if something had been dug out of him and there had been nothing put inside to replace it. He wasn’t certain he wanted the empty spot filled again. It was a touch more peaceful being like this.

He felt hollow, and sharper, and as grief stopped blunting the edges of his mind, his mind kept returning to the basement. Stephen had spent a little over four months dreading the idea of going back into the basement, terrified of what he might find that Herbert had been working on during his… absence. Herbert had, after all, spent many an evening down there for hours, not emerging until well after night had fallen, and that much, Stephen only knew because he’d woken to the sound of footfalls in the upstairs hallway.

But he had to know, had to face it; he couldn’t _do_ anything about it until he knew what it was he was contending with. So, with the first day that saw Herbert leaving the house on business in Bolton proper, Stephen slipped down into the basement, feeling for all the world like a child going somewhere out of bounds, regardless of how inappropriate the comparison was.

What he found only confused him.

He wasn’t expecting to find a corpse, or a living body (Wished he didn’t have to fear finding the latter). There was absolutely no way Herbert could have gotten either of those into the house without Stephen noticing, and probably no way he could have gotten a corpse from the potter’s field to their house without being discovered. Stephen had had years to learn just how incapable Herbert was of transporting a corpse by himself; he had always needed Stephen’s help to transport a corpse quickly enough to evade discovery.

What he found was a not-so-fine layer of dust coating the tables and the equipment Herbert had always kept so pristine, a not-so-fine layer of dust gathering on the brick floor. The only break in the dust was a small trail leading from the base of the stairs to the small table off to the side that Herbert used to write, but there were no new notes that Stephen could see or find, either in the laboratory or upstairs in his bedroom. Herbert was, in certain respects, a predictable man (Though, as Stephen had learned to dear cost, not in all). When it came to the business of reanimating the dead, he did not write his notes in his bedroom. He didn’t write them in his consulting room. He went to the basement to write his notes. He _only_ went to the basement to write his notes. And there were no new notes in the basement.

Stephen had spent a little over four months dreading the very idea of walking down the stairs into the basement laboratory, his mind concocting horrors more terrible than the last to be found in that hidden space. But for the life of him, he couldn’t work out just what it was Herbert had been doing down here, all this time. He couldn’t work out if Herbert had been doing anything down here at all.

(In the beginning, when summer heat had still been thick and cloying in the air, he’d wanted to ask him why, and could never find it in himself to ask. The heat was a stopper to his voice. Herbert never explained himself—Herbert barely spoke at all anymore—and his silence grew more damning and more confounding by the day. Now, Stephen wanted again desperately to ask him why, but he feared what the answer might be, and he didn’t ask.)

He began seeing patients again. For the first couple of days he was back, Stephen hadn’t been approached in any capacity that he was aware of by his patients. Upon seeing them again, he discovered, from their sympathetic (and sometimes disgruntled) tales, that that hadn’t been a natural thing; he discovered, with a jolt of shock and something appallingly warm, that his partner had, for the first couple of days he was back in Bolton, actively discouraged his patients from trying to schedule appointments with him. Evidently _very_ firmly.

He began seeing patients again. His patients expressed their condolences, and most of them commented on his seeming… Half-awake, one of them had said, like he was moving through the waking world barely cognizant of what was actually _in_ it. Or something to that effect.

He found himself chasing after the stray scents left behind by visitors, after cigarette smoke and stale perfume, chasing in circles and circles and unable to comprehend why he couldn’t find the source. The constant gloom of early nights pervaded the house, misty and softly heavy. He couldn’t, couldn’t concentrate, every shadow took him back to a bedside or a graveside and to helpless frustration and helpless grief and the utter, absolute helplessness of watching the light in his father’s eyes wink out so suddenly and never return.

Stephen had seen it now, he truly knew just how little difference there was between life and death. He’d thought he’d seen all of that five years ago in the summer, when plague had wrapped its strangling, tumorous coils around Arkham. He was wrong. Now, _now_ , Stephen understood how narrow the gulf between life and death truly was, how narrow and yet, without the proper tools, how unpassable.

And through it all was Herbert, watching him with a distant, reticent concern, brow furrowed and lips slightly pursed. How things had changed—now Stephen was the one who occasionally found himself being asked if he had eaten, if he was sleeping, if he needed…

What Stephen _needed_ was… He sucked in a sharp breath. He needed to see that light enter dead eyes again. What he needed was to look at Herbert and not see the blood on his hands, or perhaps he needed to look at him and not still see, with so much clarity, what had—

The silence grew increasingly unbearable with each passing day, the very walls seeming to crackle with unspent energy, waiting to find an outlet. Something, something. The energy transferred itself to Stephen’s skin, racing up and down his arms and his abdomen, keeping him from steady sleep, keeping him from sharp concentration.

As his patients had remarked on him looking, Stephen felt half-awake. He felt as if he was moving through the confines of a shifting, twisting dream. Never able to find a foothold on firm ground, no matter what he did.

One night found him pacing up and down the small porch of their house, breath coming out in short, silvery puffs. The moon shone milky white over the snow that had been falling since the evening, and everything was silent. The house was too far away from Bolton for any of the sounds of that town to reach Stephen’s ears, and there was nothing closer by that could jar dead silence into life.

Bitter cold bit into Stephen’s limbs, pricked at his face like the jabbing of a needle. He paced the rough, uneven boards of the porch, seeking something he couldn’t find—useless to go looking for something when you didn’t know what you were looking for.

Useless, and his skin was starting to numb in the cold. Time to go inside. He’d get another quilt for his bed out of the linen closet, and just try to sleep.

Not to be. The ground floor of the house he found silent and empty, smelling of soap and cigarette smoke and stale perfume, but so distant as to make themselves ghostly and unreachable—something that tantalized and never satisfied. When Stephen reached the top of the stairs, he wasn’t even to his bedroom door before the other swung quietly open, and its occupant appeared in the faint light cast by the gaslight inside.

Herbert was dressed down to his shirtsleeves, a rarity for him, even at night. The gaslight was on in his room; his pale hair, gold-gilt in that flickering light, was visibly disheveled. It looked as if Stephen wasn’t the only one chasing after his bed.

Their eyes met, and the silence of the house was like a physical presence between them, the ghost of—Stephen didn’t want to think about that. There was no shortage of possibilities, and not all of them wore human forms. Stephen stood still, pinned in place—or perhaps he wasn’t pinned in place, perhaps he didn’t want to walk out of the sight of those eyes at all—as Herbert stepped quietly out in the hallway.

Herbert’s pale, dazzlingly blue eyes raked over his body, his face unreadable. “I could hear you…” He trailed off, frowning slightly.

“Needed to clear my head.”

That frown deepening, “I’d rather you wear a _coat_ if you’re going to go outside in this weather. You’ll catch cold.”

Stephen shrugged. There was nothing he could really say.

And his breath caught in his throat suddenly when Herbert took a few steps closer to him. Stared up into his face with an odd, slightly strained look on his own. Herbert’s lips parted slightly, as if to speak—or perhaps not—but he backed away suddenly, face downcast and shut-off. “Good night, Stephen,” he said to the floor, and turned, prepared to disappear inside his own room, out of reach.

Something in Stephen broke at that moment.

Herbert never reached his bedroom door. With a speed Stephen had never known he had in him, he reached forward and grabbed Herbert’s forearm, yanking him back until he was pressed tight against Stephen’s chest, wobbling slightly as he was pulled almost to tiptoe. Stephen wrapped an arm around his back to steady him and pull him closer, slid a hand behind his neck to angle his head, look into his eyes.

Herbert blinked up at him, startled as he so rarely allowed others to see him as. His right arm was trapped between Stephen’s body and his own, hand pressed flat against the former’s chest. He opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he might have said was smothered and fast forgotten.

It was possible that Stephen had tracked down the source of that phantom smell of cigarette smoke to the man held fast in his arms. He thought he caught a whiff of it clinging to Herbert’s hair as he pressed and worried at his pliant, quivering lips. Then again, Herbert could have seen a patient today who smokes. The thought fled his mind as quickly as it had arrived.

He met with no resistance, no digging in of the heels as he shoved Herbert up against the wall; Herbert’s arms snaked around his back, hands digging fingernails into his back. When Stephen drew back for air, the sight of Herbert staring up at him, eyes round and mouth open, sent a half-willing shock of pleasure through him.

“Odd way to express grief,” Herbert said in a faint, gasping voice, blinking rapidly.

Never mind that it had been nearly two weeks since he had come back, and the most violent grief had blunted itself to a dull, throbbing ache that he could almost ignore if he concentrated on something else. Rough-voiced, “If you have a complaint, you had better make it now.”

“I h—“ The next noise from Herbert’s mouth was a strangled cry as Stephen fisted his hand in his hair and yanked his head back to expose more of his smooth neck.

He had missed this. In spite of every reason why he shouldn’t, he had missed this. Missed the soft, cool skin that gave so smoothly under his lips and between his teeth, missed the hand that had skated up his back and pressed hard against the back of his neck, short, uneven fingernails grazing his skin. Missed this sense of enclosing intimacy, of the world shrinking down to the two of them, everything beyond becoming distant and unimportant. He needed the world to be unimportant.

Stephen found Herbert’s right carotid artery with his mouth, latched his teeth none too gently over it and sucked at the skin. The predictable happened, but the shaky, almost wounded noise that escaped Herbert’s mouth and his racing pulse throbbing against Stephen’s lips still drew him in closer, still saw pleasure hardening into desire. He relaxed his grip on Herbert’s hair, let that hand fall to his shoulder, even as he tightened his grip on Herbert’s back, even as Herbert shivered and squirmed in his grasp.

They hung like that for a while. Herbert’s breaths were high and shallow next to Stephen’s ear, his slender fingers rubbing circles on the back of Stephen’s neck. Inertia was starting to work on Stephen, trying to hold him in place. He didn’t know what it was, some sort of malaise or a simple desire to prolong this isolated intimacy as much as he could. He didn’t know. It was becoming a little hard to think. He could think of scarcely anything beyond want.

With a slow, shaky breath, Stephen slid his hand roughly down Herbert’s chest, pausing for a moment on his heaving chest before continuing his progress downwards. He savored entirely too much the sharp hitch in Herbert’s breathing when Stephen’s hand halted at the front of his trousers. Shallow breaths became choked-back whimpers, became gasps, became high-pitched moans as Stephen groped, stroked, and tugged.

More than five months, and Stephen had managed to forget how _loud_ Herbert was. Those months had managed to strip all the sound from their past encounters, and managed to trick Stephen into believing that there had been silence. But he was, evidently thinking nothing of keeping his voice down—or perhaps Stephen wasn’t the only one having trouble thinking of anything beyond want. Herbert moaned sharply into Stephen’s mouth when he lifted up his head to kiss his lips, his teeth grazing Stephen’s lower lip so roughly that it was a wonder it didn’t split; a small groan rose in the back of Stephen’s throat at the sensation. Loud, and reactive—soon, Herbert was arching his hips desperately into every stroke of Stephen’s hand, his shivering turned to trembling.

Eventually, Stephen stilled. Herbert made a small, sharp whine of protest as Stephen broke their kiss, and a slightly louder one as Stephen let his hand settle on Herbert’s hip. Struggling for breath, Stephen kept waiting for Herbert to say something, anything, to push him away or pull him in closer, but Herbert, open-mouthed and panting, lips wet and swollen, white face clearly flushed pink despite the poor light, just stared up at him. There was a question sparking in the half-lidded eyes that darted over his face, but he never gave voice to it. His fingernails raked lightly over the back of Stephen’s neck.

This wasn’t how he wanted it. Not like this, not out here in the hall. It felt like stepping over the edge of a cliff, but Stephen took Herbert’s hand and led him back into the shelter of his dark room.

-0-0-0-

It wasn’t that much later that Stephen noticed the blood. Entering his room had been like flipping a switch for them both, striking them both with such urgency that Stephen had barely thought to turn on his lamp. Neither of them had lasted very long, tenderness taking second place to rough desperation. It wasn’t that much later when the two of them were curled up prone and panting on the bed, and Stephen noticed the blood smeared around a bite mark at the base of Herbert’s neck, glistening in the lamplight.

It wasn’t the only thing Stephen noticed.

“I can do this myself,” Herbert remarked, the prim note in his voice belied by an unmistakable hoarse rasp—the high, ecstatic cries of barely ten minutes ago were still vividly impressed upon Stephen’s mind, still ignited a spark of arousal. “It’s not as if I can’t _see_ the damn thing.”

“I know. Just—let me.”

Herbert huffed, but didn’t hop up from the edge of the bed or attempt to take the clean rag and basin of water Stephen had retrieved away from him. “It’s hardly necessary, but oh, if it pleases you…”

“It does,” Stephen said firmly. “Now hold still.”

The water was cold—it could hardly be anything else in December—but Herbert didn’t flinch away from it as Stephen dabbed at the scarlet smear on his neck. He sat perfectly straight, incongruous to the sweat glistening on his brow and narrow chest, damp hair clinging to his face, the high patches of color on his cheeks and the red marks scattered across his lower neck and his clavicle, the thin trickle of semen dribbling down his thigh, despite all efforts to clean them both up. Sitting straight, but not exactly still. He didn’t flinch away from the cold cloth on his skin, however uncomfortable the chill air in this room might have made it, but he was still trembling, just enough to be noticeable. He hadn’t stopped trembling all the way through.

Stephen wished Herbert would slouch, just a little. A slouch would match more with the trembling. A post-coital slouch would have been more natural than the rigid posture Herbert always insisted on, would have been a touch more human. If Herbert had slouched, rather than sitting as straight as he did, it would have been easier for Stephen not to notice that he had visibly lost weight since the last time they had been together.

He hadn’t noticed it earlier, when he had been so desperately, violently eager to touch and stroke and clutch at satin-smooth skin, to forget himself in spare, pliant flesh. Of course he hadn’t noticed it, Stephen thought disgustedly, as he unscrewed the cap off of his bottle of ethanol and let it wet the cloth a little. He’d been too wrapped up in acting like a dog in heat, so intent on what he wanted that he couldn’t register anything else until after he’d gotten it. And he hadn’t noticed it when he’d first come home after burying his father, when he’d sobbed into Herbert’s chest until falling into an exhausted sleep. But he had lost weight. Herbert, always slight and slender, even when he could be persuaded to eat regularly, looked, rather than slender, decidedly bony. His ribs didn’t show under the skin, not yet, but Stephen didn’t think it would be much longer, if he didn’t start eating regularly again.

It shouldn’t make him feel guilty. There should have been no vein of guilt squirming in his gut. They were both grown men, and it wasn’t Stephen’s responsibility to watch how much Herbert was (or wasn’t) eating—regardless of his having, once upon a time, paid much closer attention. After what had happened, after what Herbert had done, Stephen shouldn’t have had to care.

( _I wish you would just tell me why_.)

It wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t simple at all.

Stephen pressed the part of the cloth soaked with ethanol to the bite, and _now_ there was a flinch and a sharp, hissing intake of breath. When Stephen looked up, Herbert’s face was just a little tight, a sharp line furrowed between his brows.

“I’m sorry.”

A short, dismissive shake of that fair head. “It’s fine. It’s just antiseptic; it always stings.”

The rag slapped wetly against the rim of the bowl on the nearby dresser as Stephen discarded it. “That’s not what I—“ he ran a hand through his hair, letting out a whistling sigh. “I’m sorry, Herbert. I—“

Herbert slung his arms around Stephen’s neck, drawing his head down to kiss him, a soft, quick press of lips. “It’s fine, dear,” he told him firmly. “Enough.”

Herbert’s eyes glimmered with an odd mixture of emotions. Satisfaction was turning to exhaustion, but the rosy pink flush in his cheeks gave the lie to the idea of total exhaustion. But the exhaustion was rooted more deeply in something else, and as Stephen looked over Herbert’s face, he thought it might have been relief that he was seeing. There was something else, something wistful that he couldn’t quite place…

Then, Herbert flashed one of his rare, quicksilver smiles at him, and Stephen leaned willingly into the next kiss, just as soft as the last, but longer. His breathing slowed to almost nothing. Nothing felt as natural as this. Herbert trembled still in his arms.

Stephen lifted a hand to stroke Herbert’s silky, sweat-damp hair, only for Herbert to abruptly draw back from his mouth and rest his head against Stephen’s chest, leaning his weight against him. Eyes shut, his face becoming, if not tranquil, at least somewhat more relaxed, he looked… Stephen didn’t have the words for it.

“I am sorry about your father,” Herbert murmured a little while later, when they were lying back in Stephen’s bed, sheet and coverlet and quilts pulled up about them to ward off the cold—not that that did a thing about Herbert’s slight trembling. He ran his hand back and forth slowly over the hair on Stephen’s chest, his head a solid weight against Stephen’s sternum. He seemed to prefer Stephen’s chest to the pillow to rest his head on, tonight, not that Stephen especially cared. He just wanted to stay like this, curled up close, skin against skin, for as long as they could. The occasional soft sigh that escaped Herbert’s mouth as Stephen petted his hair and stroked his cheek sank into his heart like a hook.

Stephen inched his hand a little lower, rubbing his thumb gently across Herbert’s fine cheekbone. “You’ve said that before.”

Herbert’s eyes fluttered open briefly, focused on Stephen’s face with apparent difficulty. His lips brushing against Stephen’s chest, he said, very quietly, “Still.”

There was little Stephen could say to that. He realized that he had, again, been waiting for Herbert to bring up the reagent. Just as with the first night, the moment seemed unlikely to ever come, and there was guilt squirming in his gut again. Guilt, and a spike of gratitude that, while it couldn’t push above his tiredness, still warmed him.

He picked up Herbert’s hand to press a kiss to his knuckles, and let that speak for him.

Silence settled over them both after that, and after a while, Herbert finally stilled, his breathing evening out into sleep. Stephen kept on gently petting his hair, but he didn’t stir. Didn’t stir under his lover’s continued scrutiny.

Briefly, Stephen wondered if there was any way he could persuade Herbert to eat a bit more that wouldn’t end in snappishness or an argument. It had been easiest to do so during their first couple of years in Bolton, when the tenor of their relationship had been not unlike that of a pair of honeymooners, and there had been no pall hanging over their lives—they hadn’t let what had become of Dean Halsey qualify. Granted, even then, it hadn’t been the easiest thing to get Herbert to eat as he ought. As far as Stephen could tell, Herbert didn’t seem to have any food he actually _liked_ , and by his attitude seemed to regard the business of eating more as a necessary evil, rather than a pleasure. But it had been easier, then, when there was no pall cast over their life in Bolton, when there wasn’t engraved upon their minds the sight of one of their reanimates standing at the back door with a child’s arm lodged in its mouth.

(Over the past four months Stephen had, more than once, wished he had broached the idea of ending all of this with Herbert, after what had happened with that particular reanimation. Herbert had, for the first week after the incident, been white-faced and shaking, as close to uncontrollably distraught as Stephen had ever seen him. He didn’t go into the basement, could barely control himself enough to appear somewhat normal to his patients, and didn’t bother trying to appear normal to Stephen. He never gave voice to what was in his mind, and once the week was past he seemed to resolve himself again, but sometimes Stephen wondered how much effort he would have needed to convince Herbert to set the work aside, if he had tried to, then.

Of course, Stephen found himself more anchored to the need to perfect the reagent than he had ever been before. Cringing away from the horrific results of their experiments, cringing away from other things, but he was more anchored than he’d ever been before. Would that he could have kept blood off of Herbert’s hands—and his own. It was… He didn’t know what to think.)

There would be an argument about it no matter what Stephen did; certainly, Herbert would be as stubborn about it as he ever was. Just watch him. Keeping an eye on Herbert was the only solution he had for a great many things. (And he had missed this. Sleeping alone had been lonesome.)

The hour was—it being the dead of winter made it seem later than it actually was, but they still had patients in the morning. Sighing, Stephen reached over to his lamp, carefully, trying his best not to wake Herbert as he did so. With the lamp turned off, the room was illuminated only by the milky strip of moonlight that filtered through the gap in the curtains, bisecting the bed. It provided just enough light to see by as Stephen pulled the covers up about them more securely, wrapping them both in their fabric cocoon. Beside him, Herbert slept on, even when his head was shifted onto the pillow and Stephen pulled him close again.

Stephen pressed his cheek to Herbert’s soft hair and breathed, very slowly. His hair smelled of nothing. The salt-smell of sweat had faded. The whiff of cigarette smoke was gone. There wasn’t even a scent of soap from the last time he had bathed. To Stephen, it was for a moment like holding a doll in his arms, though the faint warmth emanating from Herbert’s skin and the rise and fall of his chest gave the lie to that.

He wished, sometimes, that they could just stay like this forever.

(As sleep began to settle more heavily over Stephen’s mind, he wondered, with something too lethargic to form into bitterness, how long it would be before he was walking down into the basement while Herbert was in there, asking to be brought back up to speed. How long before they were working together on the reagent again. Less than a week, certainly. Less than a day, maybe.)


End file.
